Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is about to build a smart city in the quayside in Toronto, Canada. This project, if successful, will reshape the way we live, work and play in urban communities.

The city of Toronto’s waterfront is located in the eastern part of the city, adjacent to Lake Ontario, on a vast expanse of land filled with reinforced concrete buildings. There are pipelines and power supply stores, parking lots and winter docks. There was also a barn that was built in 1943 to store soybeans, the remains of a former shipping port in the area.

In the mouth of the people of Toronto, the area was abandoned, underutilized, but polluted. Now, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs hopes to transform it into one of the world’s most innovative urban communities. In the company’s vision, autopilot buses are used to replace private cars; traffic lights here automatically track the movement of pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles; robots here transport mail and rubbish through underground tunnels; buildings here can pass Expand the module to suit the growth of the company or family.

In the early 21st century, the so-called concept of a smart city was all the rage. This concept of urban renewal has drawn widespread public interest. This smart city concept aims to harness technology to reduce energy consumption and pollution, improve transport efficiency and attract affluent tenants, and employers from several countries, including South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, have transformed vast areas of land into such innovative cities community.

But no one has made a smart city a reality. Founded in 2015, Sidewalk Labs is a Subsidiary of Alphabet, which aims to develop technologies to alleviate urban problems. The company believes that urban issues can be solved by working closely with the community and tailoring technologies to local needs. “For more than 100 years, people have been committed to building the city of the future,” said Rit Aggarwala, director of urban systems planning at Sidewalk Labs. “But what we really want is to tap the existing Urban vitality and personality. ”

In the mouth of the people of Toronto, the area was abandoned, underutilized, but polluted. Now, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs hopes to transform it into one of the world’s most innovative urban communities. In the company’s vision, autopilot buses are used to replace private cars; traffic lights here automatically track the movement of pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles; robots here transport mail and rubbish through underground tunnels; buildings here can pass Expand the module to suit the growth of the company or family.

In the early 21st century, the so-called concept of a smart city was all the rage. This concept of urban renewal has drawn widespread public interest. This smart city concept aims to harness technology to reduce energy consumption and pollution, improve transport efficiency and attract affluent tenants, and employers from several countries, including South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, have transformed vast areas of land into such innovative cities community.

But no one has made a smart city a reality. Founded in 2015, Sidewalk Labs is a Subsidiary of Alphabet, which aims to develop technologies to alleviate urban problems. The company believes that urban issues can be solved by working closely with the community and tailoring technologies to local needs. “For more than 100 years, people have been committed to building the city of the future,” said Rit Aggarwala, director of urban systems planning at Sidewalk Labs. “But what we really want is to tap the existing Urban vitality and personality. ”

Sidewalk Labs said the sensor information will also support long-term planning. The data collected will drive the refinement of Quayside’s virtual model, which city planners can use to quickly and cost-effectively test infrastructure adjustments without affecting residents. It is stored in a shared database so that entrepreneurs and companies can use it to develop their own products and services for the Quayside model.

Waterfront Toronto, a developer, announced its partner needs in March 2017 and announced in October that Sidewalk Labs will be a partner. The two companies now have a year to decide which technologies to deploy and which companies, aside from Sidewalk Labs, will provide these technologies and how to raise funds for the project. Sidewalk Labs has pledged to invest 50 million U.S. dollars in the first phase of the plan. At present, the plan has been started. The pilot test plan will start later this year and will be officially launched next year.

“If the wharf area succeeds, cities in Canada and elsewhere will emulate the case because it will have a huge positive impact on the sustainability of cities and the quality of life,” said Christopher, Director of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto Christopher De Sousa said.

Think of the city as a smartphone

For a company such as Sidewalk Labs, which is partly made up of technology experts, it’s no surprise that smart cities are more like smartphones. It sees itself as a platform vendor, providing basic tools (such as software that identifies available parking spaces and services that monitor the exact location of delivery robots, etc.) just as Google does for its smart-phone operating system, Android. Details on building a smart city are still under discussion, but Sidewalk Labs plans to introduce third-party access to data and develop technology just as developers can use Google and Apple’s software tools to develop applications.

In fact, Sidewalk Labs predicts that 80% of the dockside area will involve third-party jobs. Some are likely to be other companies under Alphabet, such as Waymo, a self-driving car maker, but Sidewalk Labs has said rivals such as taxi service provider Lyft will also be able to operate in the terminal area.

This will help Sidewalk Labs replicate its products to cities around the world. Agadava said: “If you think the city is a platform, and can be as fast as a custom iPhone design change, then it can make it a reality, because it considers more than just a centralized planning it also considered People who live and work there. ”

Ubiquitous sensor

The difference between Sidewalk Labs and Google and Android is its profitability model. The startup’s business model is still being explored, but it said it expects to license the technology developed for the quayside to other cities instead of analyzing consumer data for advertising. However, given the data that the quayside plans to collect, many are concerned about privacy issues. In recent months, Canadian newspapers and bloggers have published many articles that raise questions about the business model and data governance practices of Sidewalk Labs.

A major public concern relates to the company’s plans to install a large number of sensors in the dock area to detect all information, from building occupancy to sewage flow to the frequency of public bins. The company is also developing a system that provides quick payment methods and access to services for residents and workers in the quayside, similar to the way people buy products from Amazon or get and pay for Uber taxi services with just one click cost of.

While Sidewalk Labs has repeatedly emphasized that the data will be used for public purposes, such as providing discounted traffic to low-income residents, regulating building temperatures, or preventing trash cans from spilling, not everyone is openly accepted. David Roberts, an expert on urban issues at the University of Toronto, said: “Is there absolutely any question whether Sidewalk Labs will make money by tracking people’s day-to-day interactions? What are the data that Sidewalk Labs will collect? High? How do they use these data? And who will be able to use the data? ”

Agadava said Sidewalk Lab will only collect the data needed to solve the existing problems. If a company wants to analyze pedestrian patterns in the dock area, it uses LIDAR devices to detect objects, either from very low resolution cameras or from devices that only count pedestrians but do not acquire images. “So you can capture the information you need without involving information that goes back to the individual,” he said. “I think people feel comfortable if we can do that and show how to improve urban living. And give us permission. ”

Waterfront Toronto said it will let the Sidewalk Lab be responsible for explaining to the public the personal data collected, its purpose and how to keep the information secure. This will require that the data must be stored in Canada. The agency also said Sidewalk Lab will not automatically share wharf data with Google even though Google may provide technical support for the project through its maps or cloud computing services.

To win the support of residents, Sidewalk Lab and Waterfront Toronto held a Town Hall Hearing in November and will host community discussions, expert roundtables and design competitions in the coming months. Only by convincing the people of Toronto to accept a solution to the city’s problems will the project be likely to succeed. It is estimated that Toronto’s urban population will double in the next 20 years to nearly 500,000.

Will Fleissig, head of Waterfront Toronto, said: “The quayside should not be exclusive or independent technology corridors for the rich, which should be where anyone wants work, relaxation and life. ”

It now appears that Sidewalk Lab seems to dispel some doubts. But if it can prove that data collection does improve urban life, it can provide a smart model for smart cities around the world. Matti Siemiatycki, a geographer and planning expert at the University of Toronto, said: “Interestingly, the existence of these people makes the sky the limits of imagination, dream size, and resources.”

According to foreign media reports, like most sixth grade students, Andrew – Curry (Andrew Courey) usually like to participate in various sports activities. I like to play iPhone in my spare time. However, unlike most other 11-year-olds, he is also a bitcoin expert.

He has just written a book called Early Bird Gets The Bitcoin: The Ultimate Guide To Everything About Bitcoin and published it in ebook form in January . The e-book, priced at $ 2.99, allows readers to read on the Amazon Kindle; its paper version was just released and costs $ 9.99.

As a technology investor kid, Curry loves math, likes to fiddle with mobile apps, and often comes up with a variety of business ideas. He was frustrated with the team’s foul play during a baseball game, so he proposed to establish a “Glassdoor-like referee website” for off-court daddy.

Last year, he had an ambitious plan to make 20 million U.S. dollars by the age of 14 and to start actively seeking investment opportunities. According to his agreement with his parents, the plan may make him drop out of school. Curry thought of bitcoin and started to read a lot of knowledge about videos on the YouTube site about miners and early investors who made big money in digital currencies.

After learning of his son’s search for “passive income” sources, Curry’s dad, Jeff Courey, advised him to write a book on bitcoin and blockchain, using more plain language to elaborate on the concept and then Sell this book.

“Anyone who wants to spend 70 to 80 hours studying cryptocurrencies knows a lot about it,” Curry said. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts now with his parents and their sister. “This book uses the simplest language and is easy to read and well understood.”

The book has 57 pages and includes chapters on bitcoin history, Bitcoin wallets, cryptocurrencies Ethereum and First Token Distribution (ICO), among others. The title of this book has a double meaning: first, the book serves as an early reference book for young readers; second, the sooner someone who accesses bitcoin earns money sooner.

The wallet is like a mailbox

One of Curry’s goals in writing this book is to make use of real-life analogies to elaborate Bitcoin and blockchain so newcomers (children) understand their complex concepts as well. For example, he compared the distributed accounting blockchain technology to a “Google Docs document that can be shared with anyone, editable only through the sale and purchase of bitcoin.”

In describing the Bitcoin wallet, Curry wrote that the wallet has two keys, a public key, that can be provided to anyone, and a private key that is available only to the owner. He does the analogy this way: “Imagine there’s a mailbox here, where postal mail can be sent to any mailbox, but only those who have a mailbox key can get the mail.”

Curry wrote “interesting facts” about the subject in each chapter of the book. For example, at the end of the bitcoin mining chapter, he writes that the power consumption of Bitcoin mining is “estimated to exceed the sum of the electricity consumption in 159 countries.”

Curry said he spent three months researching, writing and editing manuscripts with the help of his parents.

“During the holidays, he locked himself in the room and devoted himself to making things,” said his father. His father has been investing in stocks for 16 years and now works for a company in Waltham, Mass.

Curry said he now owns 0.00222 bitcoins (about $ 22.50). He bought before Christmas. The price was higher than it is now. He also bought some ether coins. However, he is not prepared to buy the encrypted currency, preferring to own the Amazon stock. At the end of the book, Curry claims he’s been reading Brad Stone’s book, “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon, and it is from this book that he learned about Amazon’s own publishing platform, Kindle Direct Publishing.

However, there are other plans in Curry to help him meet the $ 20 million fortune goal, including a mathematical flashcards mobile app.

The essence of bitcoin, ICO and blockchain has surpassed technological innovation. Global managers should shift their attention from the geo-political “clash of old civilizations” to the “new civilization clash” based on scientific and technological values.

A ghost, bitcoin ghost, wandering around the globe. In order to sacrament this ghost, “old forces” seem to be united. Time comes 2018, the global government faces unprecedented challenges.

China’s “Silicon Valley” Zhongguancun, a coin chieftain James (not his real name), next to the worshipers said: “legal currency (ie banknotes) has no meaning for me, I think now the bank will collapse sooner or later! “Open his cryptocurrency wallet, worth hundreds of millions of RMB bitcoin, Ether identity highlight identity, and two years ago, he is still a recognized” failure of entrepreneurs. ”

There are lots of newcomers like James, who has a similar background with the wealthiest bitcoin chief of Canada, Zhao Changpeng, who has a background in science and engineering, a programmer in a big company, and a successful entrepreneurial experience. In addition, he completely discarded Out of the Chinese name completely in English, but also to break with the old world. However, he did not decorate himself with jewels and seemed to maintain a very simple identity in order to secretly ridicule the indifferent perspective of a friend who did not know his fortune.

Eighty percent of the participants in this crazy, cryptocurrency riches campaign are Chinese and Chinese like James, whose personalities are greatly challenged in the face of wealth from heaven. James has a “special” way of thinking: first and foremost, they seldom betray bitcoin, unless the car or life force compels them to think that the “one coin, one villa” era in their world is coming soon, A bitcoin will lose a villa; secondly, basically no money other than cryptocurrencies is required in their world, and only participating companies in the participating ICO currency companies invest in them, and these ICO The salary of the staff of the currency company is paid in the currency of its own issuance, and the payment to the supplier is also paid by the employer in the form of Bitcoin or Ether.

Fanaticism is such that with so many cool innovations rapidly proliferating, every coin participant is like a devout missionary, a China investment bubble era star investor Wang Lijie publicly said: after making virtual currency and ICO investment More than a month of income over the past few years have more revenue. He described the immediate prosperity in an essay “The Three Essences of ICO” – the blockchain is beer, the bubble of the ICO, the implication, everything is a sensible and applauded feast. In fact, influential figures in investment circles including Wang Lijie, Xu Xiaoping, Cai Wensheng and Xue Manzi continue to give the public a mysterious suggestion that they have missed “tokens” and “blockchains” After being sacked by the New Civilization, almost all the vociferous sounds of the “Old World” were shaken with contempt and scolding of the rich and the new powers.

Is this all reasonable?

“New Civilization Conflicts” prelude

Is this a group of innovators? Maybe. They seem to be creating a “free” kingdom. If the legitimacy of the Internet age was to improve human communication and increase social productivity, the bitcoin innovation led by bitcoin is showing a more aggressive logic of thinking – tech elites want to destroy the existing center with the new rules Change “order, relocate Aboriginal people to” decentralize “and regain a” free world. ” In their eyes, the traditional structure of social governance is selfish and evil. Their idealism is about to smash all the unreasonable supervision and freedom to the “people”. Most of the bitcoin, ICO and blockchain preachers have Success in teaching and developing a group panic close to Doom – people are riches, you missed is the pauper.

“I suggest that you should buy at least ten bitcoin asset allocation, in case a single currency of a villa’s dream come true?” A interviewed senior entrepreneurs advise the author, he invested a huge stake in a year ago mining machine factory. It is because of such a richer entrepreneurial approach that some leading entrepreneurs are now already preparing for the issue of tokens, often starting at 10 billion tokens, which means that if each currency is priced at 0.3 yuan, The founding ICO company’s initial value is 3 billion yuan, equivalent to a small cap listed on the GEM. There is also a more subtle play has also been widely used in many communities in Qingdao, there has been a token to buy goods vending machines. Sales companies not only sell their products, but also ICO money by the way of financing, in addition to its main promotional attractiveness, in fact, is the use of bitcoin myth aura. It is said that there are banks behind the guarantee, the insider revealed that this is a billion-level business, but the risk is huge. “The coin circle day, human year” myth in the money before being played to the extreme, if an entrepreneur successful currency, perhaps 10 years ahead of schedule to complete the traditional entrepreneurial struggle, but the result is responsible for the 10 Things after the year.

In fact, there are many hidden details behind the myth. For example, in the ultimate case, a big cashier landed hundreds of millions of RMB and invested heavily in the stocks of A-share listed companies to become the top ten shareholders. It is reported that China’s earliest bitcoin China founding team has cash out close to 10 billion. Realistic logic, e-commerce Internet company took nearly 20 years to complete the innovation of e-commerce from cutting-edge to the frontier to substantive change, the Internet bubble in 1999 to 2018, began to use the successful experience of electricity business investment in offline real economy . Then, the transfer of the wealth of the currency circle is basically achieved in half a year to a year. Simply put, while tens of thousands of water test tokens are used by the vast majority of investors in the world, several realist currencies Circle big brothers began to cash in cash to buy “real economy” assets, the extreme possibility that if tokens are banned globally, it is very likely that part of the speculative super-bigweights continue to enjoy their castle in a European country Luxury life, and the “fundamentalist” global speculators with tokens in the virtual economy fully established in the world, high plate then the dream, the last great person is likely to have nothing.

As we look closely, we find that there are four people involved in the bitcoin-related debate: the first is the fanatical fan of the Bitcoin trend, the “fundamentalist” of the ICO, who are relatively pure and do not care about money Is a change in the entire world order, their slogan is “hold on coins, is to hold on to wealth from 100 times the high risk of return on investment, to 10,000 times or even 1 million times the return on investment into this large number of people through a stable Holds the fundamentals of maintaining bitcoin prices.

The second type is “Innovators,” a group of high-profile, influential, cutting-edge opinion leaders who used to invest or the media. They use the passion of the first person to look for opportunities for themselves. The “name” aspect is taking into account immediate speculative opportunities as well as long-term business model upgrade opportunities in gaining the voice of the new technology trend and “benefiting”.

The third is “global investors and speculators,” including a large number of wealthy individuals who have Chinese assets that want globalization to come true, and even some of those in the government who want to hide and transfer wealth. They also include young people who worship science and technology and even Japanese and South Korean office workers; and more and more Japanese and Korean housewives, “Chinese aunt.” Another thing worth special mentioning in this investor group is that overseas Chinese should say that in the era of China’s explosive growth, they chose to enjoy a comfortable life in a relatively stable economy, so they missed the best in history Asset price explosion opportunity, then in this wave of ICO boom, many overseas ordinary Chinese are involved in this mainly made by the Chinese to create wealth myth. An interview with a friend from Silicon Valley said: “Many new immigrants who rent a taxi in California are making a lot of money by speculating on tokens such as bitcoin. The rapid amplification of this effect has attracted a large number of overseas Chinese to deploy tokens .

The fourth is actually a “global capitalist” who has not been given too much attention at the moment, noting that they have had a huge amount of arbitrage space in discovering that they have huge trading volumes in the coinage market, not precluding them from capitalizing on the global political and economic clout Zuozhuang manipulation of the market. A saying that a global negative news early 2018 bombing hit the bitcoin price from 19,000 US dollars to 6,000 US dollars, a large number of global investment bank background tremendous amount of money into the stadium, and the news of the bad news seems to stop immediately, bitcoin Price from 6000 US dollars in a month on February 20, 2018 began a steady rise to more than 11,000 US dollars. From the perspective of foreign multinational financial companies such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in releasing information, they are ambivalent about Bitcoin and other tokens and are highly subjective, flexible and reserved. However, the regulatory attitude of developed country governments is also inconsistent. The ECB defined Bitcoin as a “non-asset speculative product” on Feb. 17, but the United States, Japan and South Korea recognized the legitimacy equivalent by incorporating regulatory changes. Objectively, in the process of globalization of tokens, the United States, Japan and South Korea are the beneficiaries of “money laundering” wealth transfer, which is completely different from the net outflow of capital in China.

These are some of the more representative roles: “Fundamentalists,” “Innovators,” “Global Investors and Speculators,” and “Global Capital Players,” all of which are the global bitcoin, ICO gamble main Participants, while “blockchain” is their technical argument for justifying their own legitimacy. One sign is that companies that are actually investing in blockchain technology are rarely involved in the discussion of the currency.

After the definition of the above four kinds of people, further analysis, we found that: First, the four kinds of people’s value propositions completely different, that is – when we criticize or refute them, in fact, is inappropriate for the whole There are conflicting values ​​between them. Second, although these four kinds of people have different appeals, there are two real driving forces behind them, namely, they are dissatisfied with the actual financial order and are opposed to Bitcoin High recognition of the “new civilization” pattern. In their eyes – despite countless debates, bitcoin represents a “new civilization” that will eventually replace the real world.

To sum up the above description, the new thinking represented by bitcoin really does not belong to the governance structure of the present society. This is not a contradiction between innovation and non-innovation. It is also different from the traditional contradiction between nations, religions and ethnic groups. This is a kind of Conflict between “New Civilization” and “Old Civilization”.

Bitcoin like this innocent wealth seems to be a kind of “evil” innovation, but the other side of the coin, with the “new civilization” lethality, it also looks like a demon mirror, mapping the “old civilization” global Asset price imbalances and the unfairness of asset bubbles in individual countries can even include the predatory nature of the unregulated printing currencies of the world’s central banks, which may be able to accelerate the bubble-out. It also mirrors the financial needs of illicit transactions that are excluded from legal tender. In other words, as long as the global asset price in the sun has a fall, the black market transactions in the dark need financial support, and the existence of Bitcoin as an asset standard no longer needs to be discussed. While South Korea and other countries include cryptocurrencies in the regulatory framework, the “invasion” of “new civilization” is already a fait accompli.

So, in a nutshell: Essentially last week, the treasurer team did not think Bitcoin was a technological innovation, but a “civilized aggression.” This kind of civilized aggression won the value support in bitcoin. So the ICO tried to penetrate this gap and completely broke the rule of being dominated by the old world. The theoretical basis of this “aggression” was called deconcentration, Chain “cutting-edge technology coat. In this way, Bitcoin coins the “New Civilized Invaders” into a heroic “fighter.”

“Rationality” and “legitimacy”

If the above analysis makes bitcoin advocates feel biased, let’s dive deeper into the proposition of Bitcoin’s “rationality” and “legitimacy.” One side of the coin is fanatical and carnival bitcoin fans, the other side of the coin is the government and the public most of the public an unknown anxiety, then the bitcoin “rationality” and “legitimacy” how to define?

It should be said that the above-mentioned four kinds of people, if asked to answer this question, the same as the bitcoin tide of the wave of them, there must be a heated debate. Here again, we also propose to use the perspective of “conflict between new civilizations” to open the cloud of debate.

Week treasurer consulting team believes that: the rationality of bitcoin lies in the distributed financial needs of the ecological environment, improve financial efficiency in specific areas, but not deviate from the essence of money is the value of the general equivalent. Bitcoin fanciers believe that the calculation loss of mining is similar to that of gold mining, but this is not widely accepted. It is not a logical issue but an irreconcilable clash of civilizations. The understanding of values ​​by both civilizations Base point is different.

In the long run, the legitimacy of virtual currency such as bitcoin is not the biggest obstacle in the world of “new civilization”, but lies in the deviation of old and new civilizations from the viewpoint of legitimacy as follows:

First of all, on the subject of power: The “old civilization” holds that the statutory subject is the administrator of power and that its power base comes from the integration of individual trust. The legal entity that “new civilization” considers is the organizer who maintains the authority of the algorithm. Its power foundation comes from algorithm identification. Therefore, the views of the two civilizations on the role of the government are essentially different. One is the authority of orthodoxy and the evil that oneself considers itself to be in conflict with the “divine nature” of the algorithm. In other words, at the core of the financial crisis, the point of intersection of the two civilizations lies in whether or not the “legitimate currency of the government” is used. However, if the existing major cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, can not be appropriated by the global government, they may be forever defined as “civilized aggressors “The shame on the column, but not in the sun appear bitcoin may be more inclined to marginalize the poor financial system operations, will inevitably be more evil.

Secondly, on the main body of civilization: At the present time, how to coordinate the “old and new civilizations” from the perspective of “the conflict of new civilizations” and allow human philosophy and ethics to quickly enter the era of “man-machine intelligence” is a historic proposition, and its core is that human beings accept “Robot” as a new subject to participate in human social activities, and have a certain identity. The human elite needs to retain the beauty of human nature and love of human society to the greatest extent possible under the premise of active fusion of change thinking and give more meaning and value to life.

Finally, on the subject of leadership: In the new era of civilizational integration, if we regard such Internet investment elites as Xu Xiaoping, Cai Wensheng, Wang Lijie and others as civilized aggressors, they may have hindered the driving force of convergence. However, if we allow them to make any rules and pillage, civil conflicts will become even more intense. The best possibility is to reach a consensus on cooperation and supervision with them so that they will change from a “civilized aggressor” to a “founder of new civilization.” However, they must have the courage and dedication and devotion, possess the pioneer’s humility and self-discipline, and serve the general public rather than the narrow commercial interests.

Above elaborates on the rationality of bitcoin, summed up in four characters as “the fusion of civilizations”, and the thinking of legitimacy is summed up as “the definition of subject”.

Enlarge discussion At the national level, if we look at the essence behind bitcoin, ICO and the blockchain from the perspective of “neo-civilizations clash”, objectively this may give China a more constructive lead on the world stage A historic opportunity for the country. Assuming that China can coordinate the global regulation of cryptocurrencies and actively promote “civilized integration,” and share the most cutting-edge innovative coping styles in China’s high-tech industry with more countries in the world, the Chinese government may have obtained a distinction from the universal values ​​of the United States A new high ground and a historical opportunity to promote and build a new system of human civilization. Landing to the concrete actions in the financial field, can we explore the digital innovation in building the gold standard of the Bretton Woods system in a similar digital era? Whether China’s central bank can take the lead in leading the world through encrypted currency issuance and speeding up the renminbi application from “internationalization” to “globalization” are real issues that are urgently placed before policymakers.

Beyond the current “geopolitical” competition, I believe that under the background of “the clash of new civilizations,” developed country governments, including the United States, Japan and South Korea, also have urgent needs to unite to establish a reasonable “new civilized regulatory mechanism” to ensure The governing sovereignty of each country, the leader of this mechanism, is destined to be borne by such a big country as China or the United States. The main contradiction of “old civilization” is the contradiction between human needs and productivity; the main contradiction of “new civilization” is the contradiction between human subjectivity and machine subjectivity. Under this premise, what are the reasons why governments in all countries should not work together to build cooperation?

Finally, we repeat the core idea of ​​this article again: the essence of bitcoin, ICO and blockchain has surpassed technological innovation and is “aggression” of “new civilization.” Global managers should shift their vision from the “geopolitical” conflict of the “old civilizations” proposed by Huntington to the “new civilization conflict” based on scientific and technological values. This has become the major contradiction in human society. To prevent this “big uprising” and “coup” from drying up the blood of the people, the government needs more and more “supervision and control” instead of “building up” the integration of civilizations. The elite groups involved should follow a higher moral self-discipline and a sense of historic mission. What you want to gain is a “new civilization,” rather than the need to crush the values ​​and lives of every ordinary person around you.

Dropbox, the cloud storage company, formally filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday to raise $ 500 million through an initial public offering. Dropbox learned lessons from the post-mortem scenario of long-term stock price breakouts following the Snap listing of Snapchat’s parent company, Dropbox averting some of the issues, but market investors are still concerned about the governance and financial problems of the company.

Dropbox was founded in 2007 and released to the public in 2008, when it quickly became a hit, thanks to its easy-to-use file synchronization feature. Although the simplicity of Dropbox is still hard to beat today, it has not expanded too much in the past decade. Almost no change was made to its core product, and although it later added a collaborative document editor, many of its competitors offered similar products.

Dropbox originally provided consumers with free photos, music and other large file sharing and storage services. The business has been gradually commercialized as Google, Microsoft and Amazon began offering storage services for free.

Dropbox then turned business to business users. Dropbox is currently facing the question of whether the valuation is high. When it came to financing in 2014, it received a valuation of 10 billion U.S. dollars. Since the round of financing, more than one investor, both a public company and a private company, has written-off the value of its Dropbox shares.

At $ 10 billion, Dropbox will be the largest unicorn IPO since the Snap went public last year.

The dilemma encountered by Snap following its initial public offering was largely attributed to two previous decisions the co-founder of the company made: one to issue unfiltered shares to investors and the other to market to chief executives and Another co-founder awarded a large number of equity awards.

When companies go public, they have set up a multiple shareholding structure that aims to keep the success of listed companies in the hands of the founders; and awarding share-holding awards to senior management is not a new product in Silicon Valley. But Snap has done them the ultimate, and therefore paid the price.

Dropbox disclosed in the prospectus, the company adopted a three-tier equity structure. The company’s stock is divided into A-level, B-level and C-level three levels, this issue will be A-class stocks. Each Class A share has 1 Voting Right. Each Class B Class B shares 10 shares of Voting Rights and may be converted into Class A shares at any time. Class C shares have no voting rights.

Dropbox’s Class B shares are held primarily by the company’s founder, CEO Drew Houston, and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, which collectively take up the company’s current 50% voting rights.

Santosh Rao, head of research at venture capital firm Manhattan Venture Partners, said: “Multinationals now have become the norm in technology companies and they want to take control of the business, strategically speaking, But in the case of Snap, the company did a bit too far because the founders of the company got 90% of the vote.

Dropbox’s prospectus also showed that during the company’s preparations for an initial public offering, the two co-founders paid about $ 156 million worth of stock rewards, compared with Snap CEO Ivan Spiegel Evan Spiegel) Earlier shareholding awards much less.

Among them, the CEO Houston received 109.6 million US dollars worth of corporate restricted stocks. Arash Ferdowsi, another co-founder of the company that co-founded Houston, received a restricted stock of $ 46.7 million, and the prospectus states that in the 10 years since listing, if Dropbox’s share price can break through a series of set price barriers in the $ 20 to $ 60 range and they will be able to cash out this portion of the restricted stock.

Although Dropbox’s corporate governance issues are much better than those of Snap, the market still expresses many concerns. Santos Rao currently fears Dropbox is facing fierce market competition and slowing revenue growth.

Dropbox reported revenue of $ 1,106.8 million last year, up 31% from $ 844.8 million in 2016 but at a slower pace than nearly 40% in 2016. The analyst also pointed out that Dropbox has too many free users compared to the number of paying users. “After so many years of development, of the 500 million Dropbox users, only 11 million are paying users, and the conversion rate is too low,” he emphasized.

Dropbox is currently facing challenges from rivals such as Google. The company also does not have the services of renting cloud service providers like Snap, thus avoiding excessive cloud computing costs. Dropbox has built its own storage infrastructure through a partnership agreement with HP. Hewlett-Packard has also become one of the company’s biggest customers as Meg-Whitman, HP’s former chief executive, joins Dropbox’s board of directors.

Dropbox may lose some potential investors because the company chose to go public after the high-growth era passed. This issue is also a long-term issue for market analysts and IPO experts in the past few years, as more and more unicorns choose longer private attributes. Although Dropbox’s revenue growth began to slow, as long as the current pace of development is maintained, the company will make a profit in the next few years.

When the market waiting for Uber, Airbnb and other unicorn giant IPO, the performance of Dropbox after the listing will provide them with some reference.

Make money by content? difficult. In the era of information explosion, only highly differentiated, valuable articles, only received money. To reach that level, you need to build a content operations team, collect exclusive content that others do not own, and build a community of readers who do not. However, too few people are willing to pay for high-quality content, and even if they do, all subscribe to the New York Times.

Make money by advertising? Harder. Outside the country, with Facebook and Google folder attack, territory, microblogging WeChat press harder and harder, people eat meat, you can only drink soup. These media giants use the standardization of services throughout the year, with very low marginal costs to attract traffic, leaving accurate user behavior records and providing advertisers with “large and accurate” advertising services. You also have to hire a group of journalists, editors, photographers, and filmmakers to make content. You do not necessarily earn the same amount of traffic. It is also difficult to provide accurate data and daily operating costs But higher than Weibo, WeChat.

Much worse, more and more companies set foot in the content industry: Michelin is selling tires, but the introduction of Michelin Guide to everyone crazy starry; Away is selling luggage, but introduced to motivate 74-year-old readers to resume travel online and offline Magazine. In the face of all walks of life under the folder and kill, focus on content production of the media by the enemy.

But there are still companies that do not give up trying to break through in such a dilemma. They believe that content can be used not only to sell money and advertise, but also to trigger a chain reaction, collect meaningful “data” and develop new business models. This company is Buzzfeed. In December 2017, Jonah Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed, announced that Buzzfeed will not rely solely on advertising for its rapid growth in the future. E-commerce and video will be their new growth engine. “Data” is the most powerful secret weapon behind them.

Innovation: Content can not only be used for selling and advertising, but also for collecting meaningful “data” and developing new business models.

1. The establishment of product divisions, digging angle e-commerce talent, gold from the content of the next star product

When selling tires, luggage are sold across the contents of the industry, the content industry can not cross it else? The answer is: of course, as long as you have the ability to gold from the data! Buzzfeed, America’s most watched new media, explores new business opportunities from a host of popular content. Today, Buzzfeed is not only an online media, selling trash cans, Trump photo children’s books, there is a smart induction cooker can automatically determine the temperature of the pot!

Many media cross the e-commerce, but in essence shopping guide – and e-commerce brand cooperation earn a commission. But Buzzfeed’s ambition is more than that: the challenge is designing products, making and selling products, and logistics. From 2016, Buzzfeed is hiring Ben Kaufman, founder of Quirky, a startup that helps start-up teams mold their products, to better manage warehouse management, checkout technology, and customer development talent. They believe that Buzzfeed’s responsiveness to content and the ability to create a reader’s self-identity can help them develop physical products.

The newly formed Buzzfeed Product Lab already has 12 employees. On the one hand, they play security cards: selling Buzzfeed-authorized products or buying products from third parties for re-assembly and selling. On the other hand, they started experimenting with the massive content alchemy from Buzzfeed to find the next best-selling physical product.

A child’s book from the Buzzfeed Product Lab funny (yes, you’re right – Buzzfeed is a children’s book) The President and The Big Boy Truck shows: Indeed contains gold, just to see if you can recognize gold.

On March 23, 2017, U.S. President Trump met with a group of civil society representatives of truck companies at the White House. He boarded a large truck prepared by these representatives and took various positions to photograph the media. At Time, CNN, with its smooth and straightforward news coverage, went straight to Buzzfeed and became a storyline of only 33 characters that went viral online. Trump vivid expression so that Internet users crazy, a series of expressions designed with these pictures wrapped in the network crazy pass.

Some netizens petitioned and volunteered volunteer as follows: “Can I make this news into a children’s book? A picture with a certain word must be very good. I did the same thing for other publishers, and I could have Do this when you are empty. “Noting that this message received not only 926 likes, but also top messages, it caught the attention of Buzzfeed publisher Dao Nguyen. Buzzfeed Product Lab immediately collaborates with printers who can print urgent documents and print a book within 1 day ready for sale.

This accurate identification, decision, rapid implementation, so that this article from the birth of a network of physical books, grab the topic and freshness, sold within 5 days 1,500, a charge of 90,000 yuan.

2. Insight into the psychological behind the interaction between the reader and the content, to create a product that can say the reader’s voice

“We can not go beyond Amazon.When people want to buy something, they are going to Amazon for easy shopping, so when other companies want to make a comeback in the eCommerce industry, they have to deliver unique value: it can be a conversation, A perceptual thing, or a differentiated service that allows consumers to communicate their self-identity through the product, which must make people feel so differentiated that they choose not to buy it on Amazon, But buy it with you. “Ben Kaufman, director of Buzzfeed Product Lab, told AdAge that behind their series of nonsense behaviors, they saw the real business opportunities for the community e-commerce community.

This idea is specifically implemented in their first product – Tasty Cookbook. Facts have proved that the gold from the content, is a good business door.

Tasty, Buzzfeed’s recipes-based website, was founded in July 2015 and now has more than 92 million Facebook fan pages and more than 2.3 billion monthly video views. After accumulating enough fan energy, Tasty decided to release his recipe book. However, unlike traditional recipe books, Tasty’s recipe book allows users to choose from 7 themes and print customized recipes book from more than 1,000 online recipes.

Exclusive recipe ideas are not uncommon, the key in Tasty’s customization can be completely hit your heart, but also sent to your home. This has two key points: First, the data, and second, the production line.

Traditional recipe categories tend to differentiate between “starter”, “vegetable”, and “seafood”, but Tasty uses community thinking and large readership data to classify. They think: “Why do people share a recipe? Why would they find approval on this recipe?” Based on this thinking, they created eight categories, including “Sweet Star”, “Junk Food” , “Busy lazy”, “carnivore”, “omnivore”, “banquet host”, “Tasty selection”, and “designated ingredients.” There are also detailed categories under each category, which are also the result of data screening.

After selecting the type you want, Tasty also lets you type a sentence on the first page of the recipe. This recipe book, gifts for personal use appropriate. And on the other end, Buzzfeed comes in touch with the user’s customized order, immediately upload the PDF file of the specified recipe to the printing factory that can receive the exclusive order, and send the recipe book to the user’s door.

Through the data and grasp of the supply chain, and seize the opportunity to launch in the holiday time at the end of 2016, online ordering of Tasty recipes reached 20,000 in the first week and 200,000 in the first half of the year.

Recipe book ran out of big data can not meet the Tasty, the next step, they continue to play cross-border, introduced a smart cooker – Tasty One Top. Tasty One Top is an induction cooker that can automatically determine the temperature of the cookware, with the functions of frying, boiling, frying and frying.

Not surprisingly, Tasty One Top is the fiercest connection to the 1,700 recipes in the Tasty App. Once you’ve selected the recipe you want, Tasty One Top will automatically adjust the amount of food Temperature, and to help you time, to remind you to do the next step. All you have to do is just drop the ingredients and serve them well in the recipe.

Doing the content to run to sell induction cooker, this sounds a little outrageous. But for Buzzfeed, it’s all about “creating something that can be shared and created more by users.” Food and cooking, are the people most like to take pictures, take the kind of film. Tasty One Top solves the troubles of a group of people who do not cook but wants to save money and get the best out of their circle of friends as they use Tasty One Top to take a picture and take pictures.

3. Use the content to create a topic, blacksmith hot products launched within 3 hours

In the eyes of Ben Kaufman, director of Buzzfeed Product Lab, the three most important retail outlets are: curtailment, story-telling, and reach. And all three, Buzzfeed has it all. In terms of reach, Buzzfeed reaches 500 million users a month, more than Walmart; in terms of storytelling, this is the media’s ability to survive; from a curatorial perspective, Buzzfeed has the ability to Large amounts of data interact with the reader, instantly understanding what the online world needs, and the reasons behind the need.

With such confidence, it is no surprise that Buzzfeed has turned a serious news event into a humorous business opportunity.

In January 2017, just one week prior to Trump’s forthcoming presidency, Buzzfeed News (Buzzfeed’s channel for reporting political and social news) exposed a memorandum between Trump’s team and Russia’s related records, provoking Trump’s inauguration The press conference criticized Buzzfeed as “a failing pile of garbage.”

For the U.S. media, Trump’s scolding is equivalent to winning a Medal of Honor (except for pro-Republican media, of course, Fox), but Ben Kaufman’s current first instinct is: “We have to be a trash can! ”

Yes, trash. This limited edition 100 trash can costs $ 49 (about NT $ 1,500) with a flawless red color that holds 3.5 gallons of garbage and a lid that automatically closes. Most importantly, it took Ben Kaufman only three hours to start thinking about business opportunities until the first production system. He knew very well that he would take the trend of Trump’s issue and sell it sooner. When the trash was officially on sale, it sold out within one month.

The abacus, which creates topics from content and extends business opportunities, hit the film industry.

In 2014, Buzzfeed set up an entertainment division to specialize in popular videos that can cause rapid viral spread on the web. In 2016, the department was given a new assignment: From Buzzfeed’s numerous articles, out-of-the-box articles, and videos to digging into the subject matter of being a movie or TV series.

For example, they are working with Warner Brothers, one of the Hollywood studios, to bring the 2015 Buzzfeed correspondent to the big red screen with a Chinese mobile phone hit by a stray cell phone and the Big Big Bang Theory) starring Sheldon actor Jim Parsons come starring.

Not only funny but also serious news: They also intend to work with George Cronney’s production company to bring Buzzfeed’s investigation into the assassination plans of Russian authorities on the big screen. Buzzfeed’s final plan, is to follow Disney’s content development and IP licensing through the development of the film.

Most people think Buzzfeed is a new media company. But now, more people in the industry agree: content is just the facade of Buzzfeed; the data is Buzzfeed’s real signature. From the content, Buzzfeed gathers key data on how users interact with content, evolving into new business models. Ruminating from content, trash bins, recipes, children’s books all the way up and movies right now, the buzzfeed jumps back to a huge data base, perhaps out of a way that traditional media never imagined.

The world’s most influential Mobile World Congress (MWC) kicked off this week in Barcelona, Spain. In addition to Huawei’s release of the world’s first 5G commercial chipset and terminal and the launch of a new generation of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S9 series, the financing scale Nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars of Japan’s Softbank’s Vision Fund also attracted much attention.

Its CEO Rajeev Misra on Monday received a number of media interviews CNBC and Bloomberg, the remaining 2/3 of the fund can invest in the target company, heavily invested in the future development of Uber equity, the relationship with the investment circle The combination of ecosystem construction, Softbank mobile phone spin-off listing and other key topics to explain.

Vision fund investment company goal is 70-100, has cast 30

According to the report released by Japan Softbank two weeks ago, the Vision Fund, the world’s largest technology vision fund, has been established for less than a year and has invested more than 35 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for the total fund-raising amount of May last year (93 billion U.S. dollars ), A total investment of more than 30 start-ups, mainly in the United States, India and other Asian countries.

In an interview with CNBC, Misra said that while Vision Fund invests more in the field of shared travel and e-commerce, it is not about thematic investment, but rather about building an “ecosystem,” focusing on bringing efficiency to different industries or Subversive company.

Misra expects the vision fund to target 70-100 investment companies after the first round of fundraising, with the usual investment in industries that have disruptive leading companies such as Uber, which invests in Uber in the United States and invests in China , Ola in India and Grab in Southeast Asia. These companies may have some business overlap with Uber, but usually do not invest in competing companies.

It will build the ecosystem of the companies it cast and promote the internal cooperation within the portfolio

Earlier, Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that after Uber’s $ 9 billion stake in Uber, Softbank has asked Uber to withdraw from individual Asian markets, saving the local leaders the cost of price competition and gaining market share, as well as improving Uber’s Uber is also discussing with Grab and Ola about possible cooperation before the IPO IPO in 2019.

However, in an interview with CNBC, Misra denied that the Vision Fund was “directing” Uber management’s actions, stressing that he was very satisfied with the new Uber management many times, that Uber would maintain its position as a global company, the IPO process in 2019 Steadily moving forward In his opinion, Uber’s future is not limited to the shipping industry. It also includes such auxiliary businesses as food distribution, insurance and car rental. It truly becomes a multinational platform and maintains its leading market share in Europe, the United States, Latin America and Australia.

Misra emphasized that Vision Fund has built an ecosystem in less than a year of investment and will have an indexing effect on the companies it casts to help them develop their global businesses. Funds also help companies that cross-sell, such as Auto1 selling used cars to Uber drivers or WeWork employees, and Lemonade selling health insurance to shared-economy employees.

In fact, the ecosystem has become one of the industry’s attractive forces for vision funds, and they are patient, long-term investors and strongly support entrepreneurs’ creativity and ambition to achieve hyper growth. The companies they invest in the next five years, “any time” can apply for adequate capital, and get more support from Softbank. Therefore, “a lot of start-up companies with a huge amount of financing, the first call always hit the vision fund.”

And the wind circle “a high degree of habitat”, is “seriously consider” mobile phone business IPO

Quite a few foreign media also asked about the relationship between the Vision Fund and the venture capital circle. Previously, venture capitalists questioned the high level of investment made by Softbank, which in turn caused the startups to overvalued or they were willing to delay listing in the privatization stage for a long time Etc., the valuation is too high also makes it difficult for other venture capital investment. For example, Softbank invested $ 4.4 billion in WeWork in 2017 to make it valued at up to $ 20 billion. However, when WeWork wanted to win Softbank’s investment in early 2015, the stock index “only” had $ 5 billion.

In response, Misra said that the Vision Fund and the Venture Capital Circle are highly co-located relations, rather than hostile. The Vision Fund also really benefited many early venture capital agencies. In addition to investing in the early stages of technology start-ups, Softbank will also invest in the high-speed development stage of 3-4 years after the first round of financing, which will provide liquidity to VCs that want to withdraw early. For example, when the Vision Fund invests in Uber, some VCs get an exit price that is 100 times the original investment.

Misra did not make any comment on the news first disclosed by Nikkei in January that Softbank plans to spin-off its mobile handset division, one of its core businesses, and invest a further $ 18bn in financing into its vision fund to boost investment in science and technology More explanation, but that the relevant plan is still in its early stages, but “Softbank seriously consider this option.”

According to Bloomberg News, Vision Fund has a huge potential for investment in Europe with only $ 563 million being invested in Germany’s online used car dealership, Auto1, and a planned $ 502 million investment in London-based virtual reality startup Improbable Worlds. Misra also said in an interview that he was looking for European investment targets and hoped that the companies in the same industry could finally share the fruits of R & D.

It is reported that Samsung Electronics, Apple and other companies are developing smart glasses, and in this area, Google is undoubtedly the originator of the industry, but its “Google Glass” products have failed. According to foreign media latest news, Google executives recently said that in the future is still interested in developing smart glasses products, will be implanted in the latest augmented reality technology.

According to the British Daily Telegraph website reported that the head of the hardware business of Otero said in an interview a few days ago, high-tech glasses is still a very attractive project for Google, but he also said that smart glasses to become a Mass market products, there are many years.

Google is a pioneer in the smart glasses market. In 2014, Google Glass began to test, this kind of glasses is actually a smart phone worn on the head, the device can be networked at any time to get rich information, the other can take pictures and so on. However, when the introduction of Google Glass, the industry has not yet set off the concept of virtual reality or augmented reality, Google Glass promotional materials, but also has nothing to do with the reality of virtual reality.

The new invention of Google Glass sparked a great deal of attention from the global media and public opinion. Unfortunately, this product has been questioned for violating personal privacy, because the wearer can quietly take pictures of the surroundings. Some cinemas, bars and other institutions around the world openly declare that the use of Google glasses is prohibited.

Subsequently, Google terminated this project, Google Glass is also considered a Google Google product completely failed. Later, Google transformed this product as a business unit, but it has nothing to do with the consumer.

However, the passage of time, from 2016 onwards, the concept of virtual reality, augmented reality began to appear, and the function of the development of Google glasses that year, just belong to today’s promotion of the concept of augmented reality.

In the field of enhanced display, Nintendo’s game Pokemon GO popular worldwide, giving consumers a most powerful augmented reality introductory education. Subsequently, Apple and Google two companies, ready to combine augmented reality and mobile phones, have launched a development interface.

Outlaw, a Google hardware leader, said that in addition to smartphones, Google is considering future development of other products that provide an augmented reality experience.

He said that Google is considering a variety of sizes and appearance of the hardware devices, a variety of internal research, but Google can not release smart glasses products.

Otero said that smart glasses and augmented reality technology will take years to mature, and Google will invest time into research.

In the combination of smart phones and augmented reality, Apple is at the forefront. In the iPhone X handset launched last year, Apple embeds a three-dimensional identification sensor that identifies and models the surrounding space and objects, allowing users to measure their surroundings with a cell phone or to simulate furniture.

However, it should be pointed out that augmented reality has not become a major selling point for Apple’s mobile phones. The iPhone X sales are so poor that Apple’s mobile phone sales in the fourth quarter of last year once again fell into an embarrassing decline. US media reports pointed out that the interest of third parties in developing iOS mobile augmented reality software has dropped significantly.

There are voices that the future of smart glasses will have a lot of augmented reality features, such as the user to see a business, glasses will show their specific information, hot items, recent promotions, and even consumer comments.

However, the small size of glasses, smart glasses, software capabilities, interface design is also facing enormous challenges.

In addition, as Google glasses in the past suffered encroachment on personal privacy controversy, the future of smart glasses to market, but also need to face the supervision of national laws, such as whether to allow the launch of shooting in a specific occasion and so on.

It is worth mentioning that, in recent years, Google’s growing interest in the hardware business. At present, a large number of hardware products are introduced, including smartphones, laptops, smart speakers, smart home products and video playback devices.

Earlier this year, Google spent $ 1.1 billion to acquire the foundry business of Taiwan’s handset maker HTC, gaining 2,000 engineers. Google will also utilize these engineers and the Taipei R & D center to develop various new hardware products.